{"id":5958,"date":"2010-10-07T10:31:47","date_gmt":"2010-10-07T10:31:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=2958"},"modified":"2017-09-06T22:49:25","modified_gmt":"2017-09-06T16:49:25","slug":"contented-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2010\/10\/contented-god\/","title":{"rendered":"Contented God"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\">\n<\/head><body><p><\/p><p> In his  <em> Beyond Greed <\/em> , Brian Rosner makes the arresting claim that God is a contented God. \u00a0The fact that God has created a world distinct from Himself Rosner takes as a kind of divine self-limitation. \u00a0Put that to the side, we can still see the contentment of God in the creation account. \u00a0Light, separation of light and darkness, and that\u2019s good enough for day 1. \u00a0God ceases and waits until Day 2 to start again. \u00a0The pattern is repesated on other days, and on most every day God says \u201cGood; I\u2019m content.\u201d <\/p>\n<p> Putting contentment in that context is enormously helpful. \u00a0How, after all, is contentment compatible with work, proper ambition, planning and goals? \u00a0Am I being discontented if I decide that I want to read yet another book? <\/p>\n<p> In the creation week, God\u2019s contentment is temporally and eschatologically qualified. \u00a0\u201dGood\u201d means \u201cGood for today,\u201d but then the next day He does another good thing. \u00a0To be content is to come to evening able to say \u201cGood; things are done enough.\u201d \u00a0Even for God, contentment is not Stoic stasis; much less for us. <\/p>\n<p> Eschatologically qualified too: God says \u201cGood; enough\u201d in the light of the next day, and in the light of the Sabbath toward which the whole week moves. \u00a0So too throughout history, God is not statically satisfied with where things are right now, but satisfied with where they have come to, how much progress has been made toward His final end of summing up all things in the Son by the Spirit. \u00a0The eschatological dimension is especially central for human contentment, since we are always exhorted to be content in the light of greater riches to come. \u00a0On every Day 1 and on every Day 4, we rest satisfied in what has been accomplished, confident in God that more and greater is yet to come. <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In his Beyond Greed , Brian Rosner makes the arresting claim that God is a contented God. \u00a0The fact that God has created a world distinct from Himself Rosner takes as a kind of divine self-limitation. \u00a0Put that to the side, we can still see the contentment of God in the creation account. \u00a0Light, separation [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theology-creation"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Contented God<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In his Beyond Greed , Brian Rosner makes the arresting claim that God is a contented God. &#160;The fact that God has created a world distinct from\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2010\/10\/contented-god\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta 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